


Holiday Experiment

by Seaward



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Animal Play, Christmas, Established Relationship, M/M, well really mostly discussion of animal play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 23:43:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5517506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney was as surprised by the gift as by the fact that they'd evidently been exchanging gifts for years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holiday Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to The Guy for help with the first scene. I rushed a bit to post this right away, so I didn't have anyone beta the rest. It may be a little different from what I usually write, and it's only rated mature for what characters think or talk about.

It was Christmas Eve, and his boyfriend felt obliged to attend Woolsey's stupid mulled wine and whatever party. Rodney wanted no part of Christmas Eve or Christmas. He resented the party, even though he'd been invited and chosen not to go. There were so many better uses of his time, and he could work on several of them from his room, where no one would see him or ask why he wasn't attending any of the various cookie decorating or carol singing stupidities.

He almost ignored his door chime. But someone coming to his door usually meant something good or something very bad, either of which was worth knowing about.

His door opened to show Radek, hair extra-fluffed with static, holding a pillow tied with red ribbon.

"If you're looking for a slumber party," Rodney said with a dismissive shake of his head, "You should know this isn't the place."

"You know my tradition to exchange the gifts on Christmas Eve," Radek answered with a mere hint toward rolling his eyes.

Rodney thought back to all the times Radek had brought him a gourmet chocolate bar or a bottle of good Canadian beer on Christmas Eve.  Often Rodney had pushed some other food back toward Radek, usually candy someone else had left but that Rodney didn't much care for. Radek was surprisingly good at offering something Rodney wanted. In retrospect, it was easy to see they had been exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve for years. But it was usually in the lab, often without words, so Rodney hadn't noticed.

Now Radek was at his door with a pillow-sized present, or possibly the present was a pillow. If it was a decent pillow, Rodney could admit that was a gift he'd enjoy. He glanced around for something to give Radek and spotted a bottle of Athosian mead he'd been gifted weeks ago for wiring up a windmill. Rodney walked across the room to grab the bottle, and Radek stepped in, letting the doors shut behind him.

"Here," Rodney said, handing Radek the bottle.

"Thank you." Radek pushed the pillow wrapped in ribbon into Rodney's arms. "Merry Christmas." When Rodney didn't react immediately, Radek added, "Open now, in case you have questions."

Rodney sat on his bed with the gift on his lap. Now that he was holding it, he could feel that it would be too lumpy for a pillow, although the weight and squishiness were about right. The pillowcase must just be improvised wrapping paper.

He noticed Radek turning the desk chair to face the bed and taking a seat. Radek had been in his room plenty of times, usually when they were getting drunk or occasionally when Rodney was working there, but they weren't the type to sit and chat in other situations.

Once Rodney had the red ribbon untied, he reached into the pillowcase. His fingers sank into very soft fur. His best guess was a robe as he pulled out something black and furry. It turned out to be black and white with ears on the hood, legs and a tail. "You're giving me a cat costume? Is this some kind of a joke?"

"No joke. Tease me later. That is your way." Radek pushed back his hair with the hand not holding his bottle of mead. "There are many subcultures that enjoy these kigurumin, for fashion, pajamas, or pet play. You spend much time when drunk remembering the cat you left behind or bemoaning not being allowed a pet cat when you were growing up. You may not remember; you told me you curled up in a chair or under your bed and pretended to be a cat when you were boy and could not stop your genius brain from racing. Here—the IOA will not allow an Earth animal, but this—I thought you might experiment, see if it fits you in anyway. Know that I am not small-minded to think badly of any use. It is gift. Try to enjoy."

With that Radek stood and left the room. Rodney huffed at the pile of furry costume in his lap then tossed it to the corner in a heap.

#

Sometime after midnight, Rodney realized it was Christmas. He refused to acknowledge how his stomach turned to stone at the thought.

He glanced at the pile of black and white fur in the corner and remembered the first Christmas he'd wanted a cat. Of course he didn't get one. He didn't expect to, even back then. He'd crawled under his bed and curled into a ball. It wasn't until his cheek rubbed against one fisted hand that he'd started imagining he was a cat. He'd licked his paws and rubbed at his ears. Somehow those touches felt different, not like his own touch, not like his own body. He'd eased the hurt of not having a cat by being a cat, but it was more than that.

Alone and guessing his boyfriend wouldn't be joining him that night, Rodney pulled the cat costume off the floor. Bringing it back to his bed, he stroked the fur. It was surprisingly soft. He slid a hand inside and found it wasn't like the costumes he remembered from childhood. The inside was soft, too. It wasn't as furry as the outside, but soft like a fuzzy blanket, and the seams were covered rather than scratchy. Rodney decided it was more like pajamas than a costume, and it wouldn't hurt anything to sleep in it.

Rodney stripped and pulled the cat pajamas on slowly. Rationally, having fur slide along his body was nothing like being petted. Still, something in his brain found the texture soothing. Calming. Rodney curled up on the pillows at the top of his bed, like a cat. His fur was warm enough to let him sleep on top of the blankets. The edges of the hood around his face stroked his cheek. When he raised a hand to repeat the sensation, he discovered there were flip up mittens at his wrists. He flipped the furry mitts to cover his fingers and used one paw to stroke his cheekbone, up above any stubble. When he drifted off to sleep, his paw rested on his cheek and nose.

#

John debated whether to go to Rodney's room so late, but he didn't debate long. Rodney liked to complain and sometimes even yell at John, but he'd never turned him away unless he was working on something truly important.

The matter John had been forced to leave Woolsey's party to deal with, disciplining a couple of Marine's whose holiday celebration turned into a drunken fistfight, hadn't left John in a great mood. But he knew Rodney disliked sleeping alone. And it was Christmas Eve, or really Christmas Day at this point.

Asking Atlantis nicely allowed John to slip into Rodney's room without waking the scientist. There were advantages to having the strongest gene expression in the city.

What he saw in the dim moonlight from one window was enough to stop John just inside the door. His lover was dressed up as a black cat and curled into a ball. He was asleep on top of a still made bed with a fur-covered hand tucked against his face. A lump formed in John's throat. The physicist would kill him for even thinking the words "sweet" or "cute."

John wondered what reaction his lover was hoping for. Was this something private, something John wasn't meant to see? Even if they didn't spend every night together, with how low key activity in the city had been, it went without saying that they'd sleep together whenever they could. Was the fur suit some kink John hadn't known about? They'd only been sleeping together since Don't Ask Don't Tell was repealed a few months earlier, but Rodney had been open and even eager to experiment with toys, like the vibrating butt plug John had eventually convinced his scientist to wear through an entire episode of Torchwood. Butt plugs reminded John of the little he knew about puppy play. There must be some cat equivalent, but if Rodney was into that, he'd probably have given John a list of instructions and a bag of supplies before laying down ground rules. So far, while John had noticed Rodney's surprising appreciation when John chose to take the lead in sex, he didn't think the scientist was particularly submissive most of the time. He certainly wasn't turned on by anything that hinted at humiliation, which seemed to figure prominently in what John had heard described as puppy play. Then again, by all accounts Rodney had loved and pampered his cat, and no one hit cats on the nose with rolled up newspapers. Cats weren't like dogs, so it probably mattered a lot that Rodney was dressed up like a cat, not a dog.

John kicked off his shoes and stripped down to just his boxers. He moved quietly to the bed and sat where he could rest a hand on Rodney's side.

The fur was remarkably soft. John stroked from ribs to hip enjoying the warmth and solidity beneath the silky strands.

"Let me be," Rodney mumbled, sounding more asleep than awake.

John stopped his movement and asked, "You want me to go?"

Rodney uncurled a bit at that, displaying patches of white fur on his belly and inner ears. "No." Rodney's eyes opened just a crack and the giant cat shifted to curl facing John with just his head on the pillow. "Pet me?"

A sleepy Rodney was always less guarded, but the way he asked to be petted was much more of a request, with the chance of rejection, then the sort of orders or directions John was used to hearing at intimate moments. John stroked from shoulder to thigh and watched his lover's face relax with a happy sigh. John was pretty sure this wasn't about sex. He remembered something about Rodney as a child pretending to be a cat to avoid his parent's arguments and other rejections from a world that didn't have much sympathy for genius. How this fully grown Rodney had ended up in a cat costume, needy and vulnerable on Christmas Eve in Atlantis, John couldn't guess. But he found petting the usually loud and anxious scientist into a peaceful and quiet sleep strangely satisfying. It was much better than petting any real cat he had ever met.

#

John woke in the morning to light touches teasing his skin from ear to ankle. His skin tingled, and his morning erection pressed happily into the plush cushioning on the other side of his boxers.

"Morning," John murmured before he was awake enough to realize he was rubbing against Rodney still dressed as a cat.

"Umgerumph," Rodney mumbled before pulling a pillow over his head.

Remembering the ambiguity of the night before, John stopped rutting against his lover and settled for curling up tightly around the solid back and ass that had been teasing him with furry goodness. His hand fell easily into stroking Rodney's chest and belly. It was natural to try to stroke with the fur in the right direction and interesting to feel the familiar ribs and muscles covered by a layer that slid so smoothly beneath his fingers.

After a long round of petting, during which John might have dozed a bit, Rodney mashed his pillow back under his head. He still had the cat hood up over his hair and ears. John couldn't resist scratching behind fake ears and then real ones. He traced the edge of fur along Rodney's cheek and heard his lover sigh in contentment.

"If you want access to skin, there are buttons in front and I think a zipper at the bottom in back."

The wording and full sentence showed Rodney was back with him and tracking. The uncertainty about the zipper raised a few questions. "Where'd the fur suit come from?"

"Radek. Evidently we've been exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve for years. I guess he knows what I'll like better than I do."

"Your second gave you a fur suit. Why?" John didn't know whether to be jealous or amused that someone else would give such a gift to his lover. It wasn't as if Radek didn't know they were involved.

"He said something about different cultures and experimenting and I guess I told him something while I was drunk about playing cat as a child."

"Was he coming on to you?"

"No. I don't think so." Rodney rolled to face John with his eyes still mostly closed. His forehead wrinkled as if he were honestly reevaluating social signals he might have missed. "I didn't even know we'd been exchanging gifts for years until after he was in my room with a tied up pillow case. I thought he might be giving me a pillow, which would have been a fine gift. I gave him that mead I got for the windmill work. I think that might be the best gift I ever gave him. And yet, he must have planned this for me." Rodney stroked a hand down his own thigh, and John's hand followed the gliding motion. "Who'd even think they made furry animal pajamas in my size? And it has mitts." Rodney waved a hand covered in fur, a paw. "Maybe I should thank him. Or perhaps not teasing him is thanks enough." Rodney nodded to himself and snuggled closer to John, twining their legs together.

"You know," John said as fur slid between his thighs, "some people have a kink for this stuff. They make butt plugs with tails on them and people pretend to be their lovers' pets and crawl around on the floor making animal sounds and stuff."

"Crawling hurts my knees, but curling up and being petted was surprisingly good. Sort of like after sex when my thoughts slow down and I'm warm and relaxed." Rodney's expression softened and a corner of his mouth turned up just thinking about it. "I don't think it's going to be a kink for me, but the idea of experimenting sounds fun. It's soft inside here, and I fell right asleep last night. I'm always up for morning sex, so we can keep the fur if you want. But if it gets messy I'm making you wash it."

John shifted his hand to stroke Rodney's front. The giant cat pushed into the touch, but John didn't feel an erection under all that fur. Maybe they'd experiment later. For now John liked the idea of Rodney feeling warm and relaxed when he put on his cat pajamas. That was something John didn't always know how to give the high strung scientist, even if it was true that the man was always up for morning sex.

"How about we shower together instead?" John teased a finger between the buttons on the front opening. "Fur is good, but I'm ready for some skin this time."

"It's Christmas," Rodney said. "You can unwrap me."

"Even better than getting a cat for Christmas," John said as he undid buttons and slid one palm over the warm skin beneath.

"Best Christmas ever," Rodney said. He stretched in a very feline way.


End file.
